John Armstrong: Peters must end the confusion

Winston Peters must quickly sort out the mounting confusion surrounding NZ First's new stance on post-election negotiations - for his own sake.

Following Mr Peters' "no coalitions" statement last week, most people - including National leader Don Brash - had been working on the assumption that NZ First would talk first to the party which wins the most seats next Saturday about hammering out a confidence-and-supply agreement.

It now appears NZ First will talk to the party which can cobble together the biggest bloc of votes.

There is a power of difference.

Using the party standings in last night's One News-Colmar Brunton poll, NZ First would end up granting confidence, which will be in the form of abstention, to a Labour-Jim Anderton's Progressives-Greens combination.

That is despite National winning more seats than Labour under that poll scenario.

The previous assumption - which was in line with United Future's approach of talking to the party which wins the most seats - had swung things back towards National's advantage. National had only to win the most seats next Saturday to be first in line to talk to Mr Peters.

It did not have to worry that it was likely to be outnumbered by Labour, Mr Anderton and the Greens.

The suggestion now coming from within NZ First - that it will be the relative sizes of the centre-left and centre-right blocs that will matter - considerably eases the pressure on Labour to win the two-horse race with National.

It also means Greens supporters do not have to contemplate switching to Labour to ensure it heads off National.

The position NZ First now appears to be using is more logical in recognising power blocs. It makes sense of the abstention option, which previously had seemed puzzling as the mathematics would have largely ruled that out, forcing NZ First to likely have to vote in favour of a confidence motion.

Neither, on rereading, does it contradict what Mr Peters said in his speech last week outlining his post-election intentions, such is the lack of absolute clarity of language in that speech.

But it is not necessarily fairer. National will probably continue to argue that it will have the moral right to have first go at forming a government should it win the most seats.

NZ First has to ask itself why the speech was widely misinterpreted and why no effort was made to correct the wrong impressions taken from it.

Mr Peters last night refused to clarify his party's intentions. But he will be the loser.

He already has his work cut out saving his Tauranga seat, while NZ First's support nationwide in the party vote is falling below the 5 per cent threshold in some polls.

NZ First usually does better on the night than the polls indicate, but this is hardly the way to begin the last week of the campaign.

The confusion will be a big turn-off for voters - especially as last week's speech was supposed to be the definitive statement on the matter.

If the professional politicians are confused, what hope that the public understands what is going on? In short, what hope for NZ First?